


Proud To Claim the Title

by hederahelix



Category: Tanya Huff - Valor series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hederahelix/pseuds/hederahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In <i>The Heart of Valor</i>, Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr goes back to the Crucible.  But what was it like when she went through as a raw recruit in  Platoon 29 ten years before?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proud To Claim the Title

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palmedfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmedfire/gifts).



Recruit Torin Kerr was pretty sure that the ordnance she heard passing far above her head was on a trajectory that would put it well out of range of the rest of her platoon. After a tenday and a half of listening to pretty much the whole spread of Corps toys, she was beginning to be able to tell certain rounds apart.

Not small arms fire. Those distinctions she'd had figured out before they even got planetside. She was beginning to be able to tell the difference in the sounds of missiles fired from tanks and from the airborne drones.

It said something about the nature of Crucible that the sound of live caliber ammo passing overhead wasn't enough to interrupt the fact that she was busy making a promise to herself--

No, a decision.

After all, a promise suggested there was something that needed keeping. What Kerr was thinking to herself wasn't something that there was any doubt about. She knew, deep down, that unlike a promise, this particular battlefield revelation wasn't so much something to be clung to as one of those shifts in consciousness that would define her life after that point.

Her body had lost any instinctive need to flinch in the face of regular ordnance about seven days ago. In that sense, the Crucible, the training grounds all Marine recruits were sent to as the culmination of their transformation from what they were before into extensions of the will of the Corps, had done its job. She suspected, though, that if that had been the only objective of sending any platoon to the Crucible, the entire exercise could have been accomplished somewhere, sometime else. Two tendays of being shot at with often no clue what they were supposed to be doing and even less support--to say nothing of the wrenches that kept getting thrown into their plans--weren't necessary to break the startle response or elicit creative problem solving. After all, Kerr had realized before most of the others in her platoon that each drill instructors, or DI, quickly figured out which recruits were the ones trying to hack into the station, which recruits were running the black market trade on whatever was popular, and which recruits had any other side missions going.

After all, recruits' bodies learned to obey DI commands before recruit brains caught up about two days into the program--at least if they wanted to survive. And the _serley_ fukkers even used that info here on Crucible. She'd seen what had happened when Ramanujan had been asked to hack into the desk in the first base they'd retaken.

 

Kerr had figured that out right quick. Recruit Torin Kerr, a mere 38 and a half hours away from finishing Platoon 29's stint on Crucible, was no longer the same person who'd set foot on Ventris Station however many tendays ago her still shitcovered soles had touched station walkways for the first time.

That Torin Kerr had been just as short on words as this one was. Recon didn't exactly lend itself to chatterboxes. What it took her a while longer to notice was that that Torin Kerr hadn't been at all sure about what she'd signed up for.

There was an awful lot of yelling upon arrival. That was to be expected. Even in the farthest corners of space, people knew that the Corps wasn't about the deliberative process the Elder Races were known for. The whole _serley_ reason that the Younger Races had been recruited was that too many deep, philosophical discussions had atrophied the aggressive tendencies that made winning a war not only possible but more likely especially when facing an enemy like the Others. After all, any enemy who didn't take prisoners wasn't likely to be impressed by a nice ritual and diplomatic words.

In Corps speak, the Younger Races were the muscle that still knew how to wield a benny or a knife.

Unlike some people who seemed to have chips on their shoulders, Kerr knew where she and her race fit into the hierarchy of the Confederation. So the yelling hadn't been a surprise.

Coming from a backwater colony like Paradise, with its mostly farm-based economy, she wasn't expecting to see exotic new worlds. She knew about hard and dirty work. Kerr knew that no matter how fine a finished dish ultimately made it to the table--even one covered with inventive and intellectual decoration like the Elder Races were prone to--someone had to put shit in the ground to get that final product. She was more than prepared to shovel whatever shit the universe threw at her.

Standing on the metal plating on Ventris that first day, she'd watched a lot of recruits from rural places feel a little overwhelmed by the noise and diversity that was a station that size. There were Krai, di'Taykans, and Humans all mixed together. It was even easier to spot the station born or the ones from big cities because they tried a little too hard to look worldly--like their whole lives had been the mishmash they were standing in the middle of right then.

Kerr had the good sense to stand back, hands in her pockets, and read the whole situation before she opened her mouth. Turned out that was a personality trait that had served her well through training.

She remembered upon arrival, she'd looked up to a catwalk a level or so up. There were two Marines, one an officer of some sort. She hadn't know insignia enough yet to know for sure, but she saw the difference in the uniform. The other one had looked like a senior enlisted. They were having a conversation about something about the recruits.

If she'd been asked, which she hadn't, she would have said they were taking bets on which recruits would last.

It would be a tenday or two before she learned that chances were good that that was exactly what she'd seen since betting on who would was out was a common sport among the older Marines and the recruits alike.

After the hygiene processing they all went through, the recruits had a short time back at the barracks to settle in. She had walked in just as a blue-haired di'Taykan had been loudly proclaiming how much studying he'd already done. He was, if she remembered correctly, reciting the list he'd gotten from someone from an earlier platoon about the approved items to be packed for Crucible.

As the snow kicked up by a particularly close hit rained down on her back, Recruit Kerr pulled herself back from the memories of the beginning of this particular journey. She carefully flexed, relaxed, and flexed again the muscles in her arms, buried as they were in snow. She'd been selected by her fireteam to take on the role of sniper. It probably would have made more sense to give that job to a di'Taykan, since they were far more comfortable in cold weather than either humans or Krai, but the di'Taykan in her unit, Recruit Tussa di'Dav, had quickly proven himself to be one lousy Marine in Training.

She allowed herself the luxury of a small snort that that recruit was in fact that same blue-haired wonder who had been crowing about his prowess on that first day. Kerr had disliked him immediately.

Unfortunately for all of them, even the DIs hadn't quite figured that out until Platoon 29 was not only planetside but about a tenday and a half into whatever scenario the Corps had decided would reveal such distinctions. Only then did his overeager and entirely fake exterior crumbled to pieces, right in the middle of a night mission.

Kerr hadn't forgotten the look on Baaseth's, the Krai who had originally been in Kerr's fireteam, face when they'd found the legless animal who had been wounded by the filament. Nor had she forgotten that after that, Tussa manipulated things as best he could to make sure he wasn't the one in front for the rest of that march.

She might only be a recruit, but Kerr was pretty sure that Marines, recruits or full-fledged, shouldn't be grandstanding cowards.

Of course, saying so only got people in more trouble, so she'd held her tongue. But she also saw how quickly that behavior poisoned the trust and unity that was the heart of the whole training process. Tussa might have not only shot Expert but even had the highest score in their platoon, but there was no way they were putting him out there with a sniper rifle and relying on him to make the key shot.

He, of course, had protested. Kerr swore she saw a slight nod from Sergeant Beyhn when Amanda answered his questions about the assignments. For what it was worth, Kerr would have happily related their thought process to the sergeant herself, but the whole team other than Tussa agreed that having Kerr deliver the explanation looked like grandstanding and that their fireteam had already had plenty of that. By that time, Amanda had replaced Baaseth, who had been wounded by fire from a drone and had been medevaced to the OP.

It was a score Kerr was keeping track of. Always practical, Kerr had seriously considered shooting Tussa once or twice to make all their lives easier.

Her DI, Sergeant di'Allak Beyhn must have, with that preternatural sense that sergeants and above all seemed to have, sensed her frustration. It had been just at the end of yesterday's response to their plan that he'd reminded the fireteam of the importance of conserving ammo, especially in the last few days, as the push they would be making to regain the high ground would require everything they'd brought with them.

She knew the sergeant had been looking at her when he said it, but it was the way the corner of his mouth curved a little as if he was holding in a smile when he emphasized that he meant conservation of _every, single, last bullet_ that made her think he had her number.

A particularly creative burst of swearing from Amanda, the fourth member of their current fireteam, drove home the fact that plenty of people in the Corps had been darned good at assimilating to the multi-species force. It seemed profanity was the first part of any language that a Marine attained proficiency in.

Kerr whispered just loud enough for the comm in her helmet to pick up her voice. Another burst of profanity--part Krai, part di'Taykan, part human--came back. Torin decided that was proof enough Amanda was okay.

"Fukking sticks and other _serley_ ammunition is all," Amanda's voice sounded as weary as they all did.

To anyone who wasn't Corps, the fact that she was pinned down by hostiles in the middle of a firefight might seem an odd time to have revelations about what this new life she'd signed up for but not been able to possibly anticipate.

To anyone else who'd been through it, it made perfect sense.

Kerr was pretty sure that years from now, even if by some quirk of her career she found herself back here in the exact same spot, she wouldn't remember most of the details from the 20 day run that defined the barrier between recruits and Marines. But that was because the details didn't matter.

What mattered was that the Crucible was designed to test whether or not they had what it took to be Marines.

A Marine, Sergeant Beyhn had said, was not defined by knowledge--although Kerr had had her doubts about that in the second and third tendays when it seemed that all they were asked to do was memorize and recite back endless amounts of data.

She'd begun to see the wisdom of it all when she realized how much of that information she needed to call upon in every test she'd faced here on Crucible.  
Later, in the middle of the grueling conditioning tenday that followed intense training in hand to hand combat, Sergeant Beyhn, always the voice of sunshine, reminded them that Marines were not defined by physical strength.

About two days ago after seven days of long humps through grueling terrain, she'd begun to hear Beyhn's voice in her head with one small change. _Marines are not defined by physical strength_ alone.

Apparently, the Corps was also training enlisted members to read the layers of subtext that were necessary to communicate in a rigid hierarchy in which sometimes idiots were put in charge of others. Kerr was pretty convinced she was more fluent in that than Amanda was in Krai profanity.

Sergeant Beyhn's last words to them, before the VTA that was carrying them to the surface of the Crucible, departed the Navy ride that had brought them there, had been that a Marine was defined by mental toughness.

Even members of the Navy could survive a day or two of the Crucible, with the right gear. With a little instruction, Sergeant Beyhn suggested, a civilian could emerge unscathed.

But what really defined Marines, Beyhn had told them as his scarlet hair stood at perfect attention (She'd looked. She couldn't help it. She needed to know if his hair really was as squared away during a speech in the middle of zero gee as it sounded like it would be.), was that they had the will to bend the universe to do their bidding.

Recruit Kerr had found that will while lying in wait in the snow.

A lesser person might be defeated by the fact that she had had the worst marks of anyone in her fireteam when it came to qualifying with the long gun.

But they needed Amanda to ride herd on Tussa. Baaseth was on the OP. And Donnelly was the only one with the knife skills they needed for that job.

So there she was deep in the snow, willing her body to stop shivering. Her team, her sergeant, and the Corps had needed a sniper for this mission, so she became one. When the target came into position in the center the scope that her whole world had narrowed to, she exhaled one breath, waited for the stillness, and pulled the trigger.

The drone went down in one.

Recruit Torin Kerr might have just over three days left on Crucible. But she'd already learned what the Corps had to teach her. As she listened to Amanda's congratulatory whisper even as their attention turned to provide support for Donnelly as he defused the trap he'd been sent to deal with, she tracked her sights to the northwest and found her teammate, stealthily moving up behind his target. Her next job was to provide support. She would do so. Kerr had no doubts.

In thirty eight hours, she'd bet money it would be Sergeant Beyhn who would be calling her a Marine for the first time. If that NCO or officer had put money on her, she'd have made him some bank. And while the life of a DI wasn't for her, a little itch on the back of her neck told her that she would find a home in the Corps, even if she never saw Crucible again.


End file.
